Map - Lydiard Tregoze (Lydiard Tregoze)

Lydiard Tregoze is a small village and civil parish on the western edge of Swindon in the county of Wiltshire, in the south-west of England. It has in the past been spelt as Liddiard Tregooze and in many other ways.

The parish includes the small village of Hook, and the hamlets of Hook Street and Ballard's Ash.

Lydiard Tregoze is mentioned in the Doomsday Book as a manor belonging to Alfred of Marlborough, Baron of Ewyas and a Tenant-in-Chief to King William I of England. Near Royal Wootton Bassett, the parish of Lydiard Tregoze was part of the Kingsbridge Hundred, while its village originally centred on the medieval parish church of St Mary and the nearby manor house, Lydiard House, which came to be the home of the St John family, Viscounts Bolingbroke. However, the original village of Lydiard Tregoze disappeared, giving way to the grounds of an important country house, although St Mary's church survives and contains important monuments.

Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, was the stepdaughter of Oliver St John of Lydiard Tregoze. His marriage to her mother, Margaret Beauchamp of Bletso, produced six children to whom she remained close throughout her life, and this gave the St Johns considerable influence at Court in the early decades of the Tudor dynasty.

In 1615, Lucy St John, daughter of Sir John St John of Lydiard Tregoze, married Sir Allen Apsley, one of the founders of the New England Company. Anne St John of Lydiard, the daughter of Sir John St John, 1st Baronet, was married on 2 October 1632 to Sir Francis Henry Lee, 2nd Baronet of Ditchley, son of Sir Henry Lee, 1st Baronet and Eleanor Wharton. Anne was married a second time in 1644 to Henry Wilmot, 1st Earl of Rochester, a leading Royalist during the English Civil War, son of Charles Wilmot, 1st Viscount Wilmot and Sarah Anderson. Anne St John was the mother of John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester and grandmother of Edward Lee, 1st Earl of Lichfield.

In 1801, the population of the parish was 578, in 1901 it was 618, and in 1971 549.

John Bartholomew's Gazetteer of the British Isles (1887) describes Lydiard Tregoze as: "Liddiard Tregooze, par. and vil., Wilts, 1 mile SE. of Liddiard Millicent, 5142 ac., pop. 660."

Lydiard Tregoze has been suggested as a location for the 9th century Battle of Ellandun.

There was a one-room school, supported by Lord Bolingbroke, from the early 1800s. A new school was opened in 1866 near Hook Street, aided by National Society funding; this had two classrooms and a master's house. An average of 90 pupils attended in 1899, but numbers fell and there were only 30 in 1930. The school closed in 1965 and its 23 pupils transferred to Lydiard Millicent. The building was later extended and is now a small hotel and restaurant.